Contributed Comments

Comments: Lots of work was done with the Access Fund on the road and some of the trails on 12/3/2016. The road is still pretty rugged in a couple of spots although there were a couple of Subaru Outbacks that had made it up there.

Comments: A few helpful hints for anyone heading up here for the first time:

- There is no cell phone service anywhere close to The Needles - The nearest place that reliably has gas is Camp Nelson. Even on Memorial Day weekend the Ponderosa was out, so make sure you have plenty before heading up - The road was no problem for a Subaru with AWD, but you might have trouble in a couple of spots with something less capable

And we thought that driving up Hot Springs Road (M-56) from Ducor, CA was a much bett... more >>

Comments: Just chiming in here because I'd love to see some organization for this area as well. I was up there yesterday for the first time, and between this site and Squeezing The Lemmon II there was essentially no useful information for The Fortress. We found some cool climbs (a bunch of nice vertical sport climbs at the base of the Right Fortress) but I have no idea what they were.

Putting "dead tree" on a topo is f'ing useless if I can see 15 dead trees from any given place at the base of a wall.

Comments: The directions to this crag (or lack thereof-- there's only a misleading map or two) in the Squeezing the Lemon book are terrible. I guess if you're on this page that doesn't really matter, but we tried to follow the book and ended up totally turned around.

The book doesn't mention that you should park at the San Pedro pullout, and it shows the trails leading up from somewhere further up the road.

Comments: The last bit is cruxy, but unfortunately the rock up there is pretty mungy. It would be a lot more fun if the crux slab moves were on the high-quality grainy granite found elsewhere at PP instead of the baked crusty stuff.